(no subject)
Kage Baker's latest, The Empress of Mars, is basically a classic story of an Irish bar-owner struggling to make good, comfortably settle her three daughters, keep her colorful cast of clientele happy, and stick it to the man!
Of course, this is Kage Baker, which means there are a few twists, like:
- the whole thing takes place on Mars
- bar-owner Mary Griffith started out her career as a xenobotanist with the evil Martian settlement corporation before getting fired and stranded
- the colorful clientele include Nepal's leading journalist (making his name with exclusive Mars video dispatches), an Italian millionaire heir/romantic/diamond prospector/historical reenactor, a potentially possessed one-eyed ex-priestess who doubles as a short-order cook, an autistic genius who has single-handedly made Mars agriculturally viable with his mechanical bees, and Mars' very first casino owner, not to mention a secret cyborg or two
- the climax of a book is an epic tornado that hits as the entire bar is being pulled up a mountain by anti-gravity sleds.
Between the humor, the emphasis on making space settlement realistic and gritty, the frontier themes, and the "stick it to the man!" sentiment - not to mention the resident crazy girl in the kitchen - the feel of the book is almost Firefly-ish. It's hard for me to judge, but I would say it works pretty well as a standalone, despite being set in Kage Baker's Companyverse; there's only one character who's tied to the rest of the series at all, and he works decently in his own right. The weird thing, though, is that I imagine the story reads completely differently if you are familiar with Baker's other books, and if you aren't. If you aren't, it's basically about a plucky bunch of misfits who manage to successfully create a thriving settlement despite the evil corporation that wants to see them fail! If you are . . . I don't want to say anything spoily, but rymenhild, dictator_duck, you will know what I mean when I say the settlement in question is Mars Two.
Because it's Kage Baker, it's nearly a given (for me, at least) that the book will be fun to read - she's a very funny writer, and such a wonderful dork. (It's worth it for the scene where Fake Father Christmas appears and announces that since they are short of funds he is giving everyone ASTRAL PROJECTION PRESENTS alone.) And the characters of course are all a ton of fun. My biggest issue was the emotional balance of the book - I felt like the emotional center should have been the relationships between and among Mary and her three daughters, and that didn't really get the focus until towards the end, when it seemed like too little, too late. On the other hand, that may just be my biases speaking.
Of course, this is Kage Baker, which means there are a few twists, like:
- the whole thing takes place on Mars
- bar-owner Mary Griffith started out her career as a xenobotanist with the evil Martian settlement corporation before getting fired and stranded
- the colorful clientele include Nepal's leading journalist (making his name with exclusive Mars video dispatches), an Italian millionaire heir/romantic/diamond prospector/historical reenactor, a potentially possessed one-eyed ex-priestess who doubles as a short-order cook, an autistic genius who has single-handedly made Mars agriculturally viable with his mechanical bees, and Mars' very first casino owner, not to mention a secret cyborg or two
- the climax of a book is an epic tornado that hits as the entire bar is being pulled up a mountain by anti-gravity sleds.
Between the humor, the emphasis on making space settlement realistic and gritty, the frontier themes, and the "stick it to the man!" sentiment - not to mention the resident crazy girl in the kitchen - the feel of the book is almost Firefly-ish. It's hard for me to judge, but I would say it works pretty well as a standalone, despite being set in Kage Baker's Companyverse; there's only one character who's tied to the rest of the series at all, and he works decently in his own right. The weird thing, though, is that I imagine the story reads completely differently if you are familiar with Baker's other books, and if you aren't. If you aren't, it's basically about a plucky bunch of misfits who manage to successfully create a thriving settlement despite the evil corporation that wants to see them fail! If you are . . . I don't want to say anything spoily, but rymenhild, dictator_duck, you will know what I mean when I say the settlement in question is Mars Two.
Because it's Kage Baker, it's nearly a given (for me, at least) that the book will be fun to read - she's a very funny writer, and such a wonderful dork. (It's worth it for the scene where Fake Father Christmas appears and announces that since they are short of funds he is giving everyone ASTRAL PROJECTION PRESENTS alone.) And the characters of course are all a ton of fun. My biggest issue was the emotional balance of the book - I felt like the emotional center should have been the relationships between and among Mary and her three daughters, and that didn't really get the focus until towards the end, when it seemed like too little, too late. On the other hand, that may just be my biases speaking.